by Kelly Wenner

A recent report developed by the Higher Education Climate Adaptation Committee, convened by the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), evaluated how colleges and universities are preparing for a changing climate through a variety of components. The report, Higher Education’s Role in Adapting to a Changing Climate, released in March 2011, looked at characteristics of colleges including their curricula and education, research, operations, and community engagement activities. The report provided an overview and examples on what colleges should be doing to engage students and manage risks in their own campus communities to become more resilient in the face of current and future climate change.

While higher education leaders have taken leadership roles in climate mitigation, they must now take a stance on climate adaptation. Mitigation involves preventing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Adaptation is for preparing for and responding to the impacts of climate change.  Changing climate conditions are already impacting campuses east and west, north and south.  At the 2011 ACUPCC Climate Leadership Summit nearly every campus representative attending reported climate change impacts to their campuses. Flooding damaged colleges in upstate New York and Vermont; roof collapses from snowfall halted college operations in Washington, D.C.; and drought concerns and erosion from sea level rise affected colleges in Atlanta and California respectively. These types of climate change- oriented impacts create real safety and health hazards for a campus and its inhabitants.

The report highlighted four different areas through which colleges and universities need to approach climate change adaptation, and offered a variety of examples of what campuses are doing to promote climate change mitigation and adaptation.  The four areas are curricula, research, operations and infrastructure, and relationships with local communities.  College campuses are unique in these efforts because they offer knowledgeable manpower with a mass of committed students willing and excited to contribute to any endeavors. The report concluded with suggestions of what campuses should consider when planning for future climate adaptation efforts.

by Beth Gray

Recently, a coworker who is also an American Public University (APU) student (as many of our employees are) sent me a link to a YouTube video that her professor posted as part of that week’s assignment.  The video, produced by The Story of Stuff Project and narrated by Annie Leonard, is 20 minutes in length and provides a somewhat scathing look at the life cycle of our “stuff.” 

Through the use of basic yet effective animations, Leonard describes in accessible terms how all of our stuff comes to be and what happens when we are finished with it.  Through the five steps of the materials economy (extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal), our stuff requires tremendous resources, natural and human.  Along the way, the process harms many of the parties involved.  During the extraction process, for example, people living in the places where the first resources are culled often lose the lands and natural materials on which they have relied for generations.  Because their resources are lost, some 200,000 people a day (worldwide) move from environments that had previously sustained them for generations to cities in search of work, often finding it in the factories that are making stuff from the resources taken from their lands.  During the production process, workers are subjected to many harmful chemicals that are used to create the stuff.  At the same time, working conditions in many of the factories producing our stuff leave much to be desired. 

Even the consumer, who is the driving force behind the manufacturing of this stuff is harmed.  The toxins that go into making the stuff impact those who buy and use these items.  Leonard uses the phrase, “toxins in, toxics out” to make the point that many of our products are actually toxic to us.  Through all of this, the environment takes the most consistent abuse, however.  The loss of vast quantities of natural resources, toxins emitted into the environment, and the irresponsible disposal of most items leaves our planet quite vulnerable, according to Leonard.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Beth Gray

In 2009 the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) published a resource entitled, Financing Sustainability on Campus.  Ben Barlow, a consultant for Second Nature, and Andrea Putman, Director of Corporate Partnerships at Second Nature, team up to author this resource and do a very good job at exploring a variety of funding options that can be helpful in pushing forward with sustainability initiatives.  At just over 100 pages, this publication is a worthwhile resource for anyone tasked with implementing sustainability initiatives on a college or university campus.  Read the rest of this entry »

by Beth Gray

The growing concern over climate change has led many companies to consider how to alter their own practices in order to mitigate their carbon emissions.  Several large corporations have taken significant steps toward assessing and taking steps to lessen their environmental impact.  Walmart, for example, has a very well-developed sustainability initiative and has a page on their corporate website devoted to tracking how the company is doing in its attempt to have a less negative impact on the environment.  General Electric also has a sustainability initiative and publishes an annual sustainability report to track the company’s progress in achieving a greener future.  Nearly 700 institutions of higher education (including American Public University System) have also pledged to assess their carbon footprints through signing the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and take dramatic measures toward eventually achieving carbon neutrality.  Read the rest of this entry »

by Beth Gray

Written by educators for educators, 147 Practical Tips for Teaching Sustainability is an invaluable resource for anyone teaching sustainability.  In his forward to the work, David W. Orr, Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College, notes that colleges and universities must equip young people “with the analytical skills and wherewithal to become change agents beyond the years of formal education.”  Anthony Cortese, President of Second Nature, also provides a forward in which he notes “We are the first generation capable of determining the habitability of the planet for humans and other species.”  Cortese continues by quoting Albert Einstein who said, “’We can’t solve today’s problems at the same level of thinking at which they were created.’”  For all of these reasons, 147 Practical Tips for Teaching Sustainability is a resource that can help college and university educators to engage their students in gaining a full and thorough understanding of the current state of the environment and what must happen in order to improve the quality of life within it for generations to come. Read the rest of this entry »